by E. B. Black
Caves were not native to the Kisthene Plains. These caves had been built by the three sisters to live in. They used their hands as construction tools to crumble statues. They arranged the heavy chunks that had broken off into a structure. Then, they sealed the holes with a paste they made using what they crushed by hand and water mixed in from the underworld rivers. The effect was random gray ears, toes, fingers, and eyes, strewn about in a huge mass. It looked like the walls had been compiled of the dead thrown into a stew pot with their panicked body parts fighting to reach out from inside the crowded dinner to safety.
Luckily, Medusa could see nothing unless her eyes were adjusted fully to the dark. She hated the fear in their eyes and knowing that she was the cause of a lot of it.
Her sisters liked ripping body parts off statues. They'd make bowls out of heads and fashioned a naked man's penis into a spoon once. They thought it was funny to eat out of them, but Medusa was disgusted. That life she had once hated so much, she longed to go back to every day. She envied humans and her heart hadn't grown cold enough to hurt any of them purposefully.
That's why she enjoyed dwelling in the dark so much. She couldn't hurt anyone in the dark because no one could see her. If she remained invisible, maybe she could even be normal again. The idea was foolish, but she needed that hope to keep her going.
Chapter 5
She had sharpened a rock and taken the point to her wrist. She watched the blood bloom from the wound and drip to the ground. Petals burst from the sand and scarabs skittered across leaves, giving the desert life and color it didn't normally possess. She didn't worry about manners as she shoved the food into her mouth and pieces fell while she chewed.
She heard a strange noise and in a panic retreated into her cave. The sound was soft and sweet like a dove cooing. Although it was the least intimidating noise she had ever heard, it left Medusa terrified. The more innocent a creature sounded, the more potential she had to accidentally harm them, but in the shadows of the cave, they were safe from her eyes.
She saw a human girl struggling to crawl forward on her hands and knees. She looked exhausted and her ankle was swollen. Her foot was twisted in an odd direction and she dragged it behind her. She must have traveled far to visit someone she lost in the underworld. Even though she was seriously injured, she hadn't given up. Medusa felt sorry for her.
Euryale and Stheno stood at a distance, arguing with each other, while their backs were turned to the two of them. She couldn't hear what they were shouting, but could see that they were angry from their animated expressions. The girl froze as she spotted them and then hopped on one foot in the direction of the cave where Medusa dwelled. Medusa slunk farther into the shadows as the girl entered. She was probably hoping they'd pass by and not notice her. The two of them waited anxiously, the girl resting against the wall and Medusa silently hiding from her.
Medusa hardly breathed. She had wished for so long to be close to another creature without turning them into stone. The thought of having a human she could socialize with teased her, but she was afraid to open her mouth. The girl thought she was alone in this cave. If Medusa alerted her to her presence, she'd probably scream and bolt.
Medusa contented herself with just being near, but the snakes were agitated. They wiggled because of her nervousness. They snapped at the air, making the girl leap in surprise. One sunk its fangs into her skin repeatedly. The girl screamed as poison entered her blood stream and Medusa's world spun. Even hidden, she had killed someone.
She remembered the stone she still held in her hand that she used to cut herself with. Yes, her hair was deadly, but her blood gave life. She could feed it to this human girl and rescue her, couldn't she?
The girl had collapsed to the ground, gripping the parts of her body that had been punctured. Medusa knew she didn't have long to live. She had to act fast.
She cut deep into her wrist without a second thought and wrapped the girl in a gentle embrace. She was soft and her meaty fists beat against her, but each blow felt like a tickle.
"Great! Now I'm going to die at the hands of a monster!" she yelled.
Medusa kept her voice quiet to seem less threatening, but the words still hissed. "You have to stop fighting me or my sisters will hear and come to get you. I won't hurt you; I just need you to be still so I can save your life."
"Why should I trust you?" The girl spat as she spoke.
"Because you'll die without my help."
"And I'll die with it!"
"If that was my goal, then I'd leave you lying here with your snake bites. It's a lot more trouble to assist you."
The girl calmed down and laid still as Medusa stroked her hair. It warmed her heart to know that the girl was no longer shuddering from her callused caresses. But maybe she was just exhausted from the effort. Already, as it was, her puncture wounds were beginning to swell and she shivered.
Medusa pressed her bleeding wrist against the girl's mouth. "Drink."
The girl swallowed and Medusa smiled. Once she had seen a coyote limp in the desert, so starved that its ribs stuck out. It collapsed to the ground and Medusa knew that it was about to die. She fed it a bit of her blood, stood a small distance away as its body recovered, and it got up a short while later, prancing off like it had been fattened for months. This would be the same. The girl's ankle would probably be healed and she'd be better than new.
Only, the girl in her arms didn't recover. She spit out the blood and her breathing shallowed. Her body was thrown into convulsions.
Medusa was confused. Her blood gave life, but until that moment she hadn't realized that this was the case only some of the time with humans and animals. Certain creatures had an adverse reaction and it would expedite their deaths. People would later spread the myth that half of a Gorgon's blood gave life and the other half, death, but the truth was that the whole thing was random. The girl screamed as her muscles seized and then gasped for air. Medusa carried her out into the sun.
She was only able to get a glimpse of the girl's pretty blonde hair and wide blue eyes before they grayed. At least her pain was over. Medusa dropped the remains on the ground, unable to watch the girl's tormented expression immortalized into rock.
She waited for the girl's ghost to appear from her body and travel down to the underworld, where she'd rest in peace forever. Maybe she could get an apology in before the girl was gone. All humans eventually went down that path and she had seen many of them leave the earth that way, but nothing changed. In fact, the spirits of the dead never appeared from inside the statues she and her sisters created. She hadn't thought about it until now. Medusa paled. Not only was she killing them by turning them into stone, but she was zapping their souls into non-existence.
Medusa's world grew dark. She was supposed to remain positive and strong so that when her child was born, she could raise it properly, but she couldn't do it any longer.
She stroked her belly and whispered, "I'm sorry, but this is for the best. I would be a terrible mother and I wouldn't blame you if you hated it here anyway." Much longer than nine months, her stomach was still only slightly swollen. Most women could have given birth twice by now. She no longer had the will to live, no matter who it was for.
She watched birds fly overhead and met their eyes. She saw one of them fall from the sky as it turned into stone and she quickly ran beneath it. Pain radiated through her forehead as it conked her and she passed out.
She woke hours later with her head pounding. She was hoping the blow would kill her, but instead she had a headache that she couldn't heal from like her sisters could.
She ran towards a flock of birds again and tried to crack her skull from the blow of a stone raven falling from the sky. She didn't die, even though she repeated this stunt several times. Her body was too resilient. She was dizzy and disoriented.
She knew there was only one solution to this problem. She'd have to turn herself into stone. She'd lose her soul, but being nothing was better than being this.
She ran towards the cave that she knew her sisters were probably arguing in front of. She ignored the weave of her drunken steps and shook her head to remain focused. She grinned as their scaly bodies came into view. Increasing her speed, she tackled Euryale. Stheno yelped.
She grabbed Euryale tightly by her snakes that in turn used their fangs to rip into her skin angrily. Medusa forced her to face in her direction. "Look into my eyes!" she screamed.
"What are you doing?" Stheno yelled as she yanked on Medusa's legs. "You'll get yourself killed! Stop it!"
Euryale's shrilly scream sent a coyote scampering in the opposite direction.
"I don't want this life anymore!" Medusa shouted.
She could hear the hysteria in her voice and knew that it could only be adrenaline that was allowing her to tilt her sister's face slowly in her direction, but just as their gazes were about to meet, an invisible string sent Medusa's neck snapping in the opposite direction. She fought it, but it held her there until Euryale was able to squirm out from under her.
What had done this? Medusa could only think of one possibility. It must have been Athena working with the Fates. She couldn't die until they cut her string. Athena had told Medusa that she would wait in torment for the day it would end. She hadn't realized that meant more than fearing her death; it meant experiencing pain both inside and out without the relief of being able to commit suicide. She could probably only be killed by the hand of another and maybe only by the man or woman Athena chose to kill her. She hated being at the goddess' mercy. Her sisters asked her what was wrong, but she shrugged them off and eventually convinced them that it was only a temporary moment of insanity.
Medusa tried to find meaning in what small amount of life she had left. She knew she needed to get away from her sisters to do so, so she spent time with the only creatures that dared to look at her: ghosts. She missed the feeling of being wrapped in the arms of another human, but ghosts had no substance and therefore couldn't help her. The lack of substance was why they were immune to her. Their powers only turned flesh into stone and trapped the souls inside the statues. Without a body, they were free.
Hermes' winged shoes flapped above her head as she reached the silky shore of Acheron, where he dropped off a load of ghosts he carried in a net that looked like it was made out of wisps. It disappeared and the ghosts dispersed. Most of them held a drachma between their lips as they paced back and forth on the silky shore of the gently flowing river in front of them. Others mumbled to themselves nervously, gesturing dramatically with their hands, and discussing the events of their death with themselves. One held a sword-he must have been buried with it because money and trinkets that lay in one's grave were the only things ghosts were allowed to hold. He thrust it wildly in front of him.
One was a short, curly-haired woman who was around the age Medusa had been when she first came into the underworld. Her eyes were large as she stared into the mist that Charon would appear from, paddling his boat that he used to ferry them across the shore.
As Medusa approached the woman, a tall gangly man dipped his foot towards the water. He looked as if he were testing it and thinking about swimming across. He had no drachma in his mouth, which meant he didn't have the means to pay Charon for a ride when he appeared. His family must have been too poor to afford to put the piece in his mouth when he was buried.
As soon as his foot touched the water, he collapsed and went into a series of convulsions. The other ghosts paced around him, ignoring him as he screamed and clutched his foot. The mist from the river gently landed on him and relief slowly crept across his face. He looked brighter somehow as well, as if he'd taken a bath.
The river was a barrier to keep the wrong people out. It held the pain of the entire world in it, so if you touched it, you felt the grief of all the world at once, but the peace of everyone was held in the mist.
Medusa heard the girl mumbling once she was within ears' reach.
"If only I had noticed the rash before I kissed him. Maybe I wouldn't have gotten sick." She thrust one finger into the air. "Surely Hades will take pity on me when I explain the whole thing to him and give me a second chance. I've always been a good person and how was I to know that my first love would lead to my death?" She laughed crazily.
"You've been in love?" Medusa asked, trying to butt into the monologue. "What's it like? I never got to fall in love before I came here."
But the girl didn't hear a word of what she said. "How did I not notice it the moment I first met him? I was such a fool. I let my feelings blind me."
She was too lost in her own world to hear anything and Medusa wasn't sure how to get her attention.
She noticed that there was no drachma in the girl's mouth. "Do you have no coin to get across? You don't have to live on the shores, you know. You can come with me and live with my sisters. They won't mind and you won't be stuck in this depressing place."
The girl whirled around and tried to grip Medusa by the arm, but her hand went through it. "You have coins? Give them to me! He could be here any minute and I need to get across to talk to Hades."
Medusa shook her head and showed her empty hands. "I'm sorry, but I don't have any drachmas. I was asking about yours, not offering one." But at least she had the ghost's attention. "But I can give you a good home, so you don't have to wander around here all alone."
Instead, several other ghosts who didn't have money, started chanting the world "coins" over and over again, lunging at her, desperate. She looked into their pleading eyes and wished she could help them. It had been so long, she had forgotten how painful it could be to look at a sorrowful person directly.
They didn't leave her alone until Charon finally arrived and they tried to beg him for a ride. His eyes burst with blue light that pummeled the ghosts without money and drove them away. He yelled about how he couldn't make a living if he ferried every cheap-skate across the river.
Charon was a handsome man with pale skin and dark features. That is, until you stared at him for a while. The closer you got and the harder you looked, the more his skin would gray. His pretty clothes would become tattered and his flesh would rot, until he became a sad skeleton, spending his days rowing ghosts from shore to shore.
Stheno and Euryale had followed her. She didn't turn around, but she sensed them sneaking up behind her.
"Why are you here?" Stheno asked.
"Yeah, what's so interesting about a bunch of stupid ghosts?"
Medusa shrugged. She couldn't explain it to them. They'd never understand and might get offended by the fact that she felt a need for companionship when she already had the two of them around.
Euryale noticed the large purse Charon carried at his side full of coins and she blew a raspberry. "No fair. I don't get paid for guarding the underworld, why should he?"
The two of them were a little too quiet. Medusa could smell the greed wafting from them. They wouldn't desire actual wealth; there was nowhere to spend the coins nearby. It would be what they represented–victimizing ghosts and the power they had to hurt people at a whim. What had she done, leading them here?
Stheno and Euryale began to corner ghosts over the following weeks. They'd sneak up on them and steal pieces from their mouths when they dropped the coin or threaten to turn their living family members into stone if they weren't paid. They gathered it into piles, hidden inside their caves. And watched the spirits forced to wander the Acheron shores heartlessly.
Medusa tackled Stheno in the air as she tried to zoom off with a piece of loot one day. The drachma flew from her hand and landed in the midst of twenty ghosts. They all tackled one another for it, but only the ghost who it belonged to was actually able to pick it up. The rest of them went through it.
"What's your problem?" Stheno stood and dusted herself off.
"I'm tired of seeing you torment these people."
Stheno punched Medusa in the face and her neck cracked backwards. She gripped her cheek.
"Butt out of it," Stheno said.
"It doesn't concern you."
Unfortunately, soon it would. The harmed spirits formed gangs. When the sisters went to sleep one night, they were assaulted with a barrage of blows from the ghosts who still possessed trinkets. Medusa was barely able to escape with her life as they beat one of her wings to the point where the top was broken. She flew crookedly and they chased her.
The piles of riches they held were ransacked. Their caves were no longer safe to near: ghosts wandered around the entrances and waited for them to return. Soon they had taken back control of all their treasure, but they still continued to harass the girls out of desire for revenge.
The sisters were forced to sleep in shifts to keep an eye out for any sign of attack and alert the others so they could run away in time.
"How dare those ghosts do this to us!" Stheno paced as she spoke to Medusa one day. "They've taken our homes!"
"I told you not to mess with them. Now they're fighting back and we deserve it."
Euryale shoved Medusa. "Whose side are you on anyway? You haven't been acting like a sister to us."
"I need to teach those ghosts a lesson," Stheno said. "I'm going to steal some more of the coins and take back control of one of our caves. I'll show them that they're at our mercy. Not the other way around."
Euryale nodded her head. "I'll come with you."
"Please don't." Medusa's stomach tied up in knots. "If we leave them alone, this whole thing will blow over eventually."
"The ghosts respect Charon because he blasts them with his eyes," Stheno said. "It takes violence to teach them their place."
"No one listens to someone they love. They listen to those they are frightened by. You have so much to learn, dear sister." Euryale pat the snakes on Medusa's head.
The two flew away. Medusa swore for a minute. She didn't want to get messed up in their drama, but she couldn't just abandon them, even if they were doing something stupid. They were all she had left.
She stroked the baby in her belly. Maybe they'd be less reckless if they knew her condition, but sometimes she didn't believe a baby could be in there and doubted they'd listen to her. Her belly stayed relatively small. The only indications that there was a living person inside her were the tiny movements she felt, mostly at night.